Yesterday, Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno made the following statement about ‘creationism’:

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.
Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods. “Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That’s why science and religion need to talk to each other,” he said.
“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it’s turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.”

Man, I envy the Catholics. I wish that we United Methodists had an official astronomer. I’d even be happy with an official entomologist.

I think I’m glad that I don’t run in circles where I’ve ever run into (or even heard of) this problem: waiters pushing expensive bottled water on diners.

In anticipation of some traveling related to my new job, I recently joined American Airlines’ frequent flyer program, and today I received my first statement (problem highlighted in yellow):

For my new job, I’ve been re-reading Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber. In the Introduction, the author says that common sense is a critical element of the processes that he outlines.
I’m usually wary of appeals to common sense, as they are often used in conjunction with various logical fallacies. In this case, however, I really like Schwaber’s definition of common sense. He says that it “is a combination of experience, training, humility, wit and intelligence.” It really surprised me to see humility and wit in his definition, and it was a good sign that I would like the author’s point of view more generally.